If you have the required hardware, you can mine bitcoin even if you are not a miner. There are different ways one can mine bitcoin such as cloud mining, mining pool, etc. For cloud mining, all you need to do is to connect to the datacenter and start mining. The good thing about this is that you can mine from anywhere and you don’t need a physical hardware to mine.

“In 2 years from now, I believe cryptocurrencies will be gaining legitimacy as a protocol for business transactions, micropayments, and overtaking Western Union as the preferred remittance tool. Regarding business transactions – you’ll see two paths: There will be financial businesses which use it for it’s no fee, nearly-instant ability to move any amount of money around, and there will be those that utilize it for its blockchain technology. Blockchain technology provides the largest benefit with trustless auditing, single source of truth, smart contracts, and color coins.”

IE… I have 50 ETH , and want to buy a ‘widget’ for 25 ETH given a particular set of circumstances (it works, or the temperature is >10c tomorrow). I agree with a seller on the conditions of a contract, and we ‘create’ a contract on an Ethereum platform, with appropriate sign-offs and verification. This could be 2 steps, or it could be 1000 steps. Once established in the ‘smart contract’, if it is indeed >10c tomorrow, the contract automatically shifts 25 ETH to your account and ships me my widget. The results are recorded in the blockchain.

According to the Library of Congress, an "absolute ban" on trading or using cryptocurrencies applies in eight countries: Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. An "implicit ban" applies in another 15 countries, which include Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Lesotho, Lithuania, Macau, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.[178]
Another type of physical wallet called a hardware wallet keeps credentials offline while facilitating transactions.[111] The hardware wallet acts as a computer peripheral and signs transactions as requested by the user, who must press a button on the wallet to confirm that they intended to make the transaction. Hardware wallets never expose their private keys, keeping bitcoins in cold storage even when used with computers that may be compromised by malware.[104]:42–45

Blockchain analysts estimate that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins[32] before disappearing in 2010, when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation.[33][34] Andresen then sought to decentralize control. This left opportunity for controversy to develop over the future development path of bitcoin, in contrast to the perceived authority of Nakamoto's contributions.[35][34]